life, love, & all the craziness in between…

Our Unique Anniversary Gift Exchange

A few months ago John and I were talking about getting each anniversary gifts. Past years we haven’t exchanged and had just cut off specific time to celebrate our anniversary together. This year felt different though since this year since was a milestone year.

When we started researching what the traditional anniversary gift for five years was, we decided to make up for the past four years of gifts as well! We thought it would be fun to start five days out and for each day do a traditional gift for that particular year. (i.e. day one would be paper which is the traditional gift for year one).

Since we were doing so many gifts throughout the week we promised to either make the gifts or at least be very frugal when shopping! Buying five anniversary gifts for each other all at once could have cost a fortune!

I had a blast getting creative with each gift! And I enjoyed seeing John’s creativity and excitement as I received each gift from him as well.

Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing. I never missed getting gifts in past years and it was such a fun week leading up to our five year anniversary!

Okay so I know you’re getting impatient, here’s what we got one another* (and a bit of our story behind some of the gifts!)

***I have also linked the items at the end(or similar ones) so you can steal borrow our ideas, if you want to!

Year 1 – Paper

I gave him a year’s worth of monthly date night ideas. (And all the girls rolled their eyes! Haha I thought this one was kind of dorky but he’s a dude and never gets on Pinterest so he loved this one and thought it was super creative)

John gave me a travel journal.

Year 2 – Cotton

I gave John golf socks.

John gave me patriotic socks (I’m kind of obsessed with being festive)

And how funny is it that we both gave socks as the cotton gift?

Year 3 – Leather

I gave him a wallet.

He gave me a passport holder.

Year 4 – Fruit/Flowers

I made him coffee, eggs, and toast, with mango on the side and served him breakfast in bed. The mango is significant because on our honeymoon we traveled to the Domincan Republic and the first morning we were there we had the most delicious mango with our breakfast. It was even more significant because up to that point neither of us had ever tried it before.

He made me a pasta dinner with some delicious red wine. He totally thought outside the box on this one. I was definitely expecting flowers!

I also think it’s funny we both incorporated meals into this! And boy am I glad we didn’t have the same meal in mind haha

Year 5 – Wood

I gave him personalized guitar picks that have our wedding date engraved on them.

He gave me a wine butler.

And we also picked out a wooden ornament together while at the market in Charleston to commemorate both our vacation and our anniversary.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about our unique anniversary week! I loved telling you all about it!

Here are the links I was telling you about!

Some of these links are affiliate links. That means if you decide to make a purchase I will receive a small compensation for you doing so.

7 thoughts on “Our Unique Anniversary Gift Exchange”

I LOVE this! We are doing the traditional gifts every year and my husband has amazed me with his creativity! Our 3rd anniversary is coming in October and I’ve been contemplating a wallet for him too. I love your ideas!!

He actually unintentionally gave me the idea of the wallet! Something happened to his a few weeks before our anniversary and I was just hoping that he wouldn’t go buy a new one! Surprisingly though, he was super surprised to receive the wallet! Haha